In a survey of the top 14 metereological record breaking events between 2000 and 2012, the 2011 drought in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Louisiana is ranked one of only three events where confidence in attributing the occurrence to climate change is rated "HIGH," according to Germanwatch's 2013 Global Climate Risk Index.
The other two events were the European heat wave in Summer 2003, where 70,000 died, and the 2008 dry winter in the Middle East and Mediterranean, which devastated cereal crops.
Summer 2012 in the Continental U.S also made the top 14 list; that year, the hottest July since 1895 resulted in a severe drought and a resultant crop loss which precipitated an abrupt increase in global food prices. Confidence that this event was climate related is ranked "MEDIUM."
Who suffers most from extreme weather events? Weather-related loss events in 2011 and 1992 to 2011 is a publication of Germanwatch, which produces the Global Climate Risk Index to analyze the impact of extreme weather-related events on individual countries.
Indicators included in the analyses include deaths, economic impacts and number of events in each country.
The results give further credence to the validity of claims that poorer countries are more vulnerable to climate risk, even though monetary impacts are of significantly more damaging in richer nations.
The ten countries most affected by extreme events in 2011 (in order) were Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, El Salvador, Philippines, Brazil, United States, Laos (DPR), Guatamela, and Sri Lanka.
The CRI Index is arrived at by averaging figures over twenty years, but there are two different categories: those countries which are continuously affected by extreme events, and those that only rank high because of exceptional catastrophes, such as Myanmar (the 2008 cyclone Nargis) and the Honduras (the impact of 1998's Hurricane Mitch).
In the current 20 year period covered in the 2013 survey, the top countries on the CRI list are: Honduras, Myanmar and Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Haiti and Viet Nam.
Loss and Damages
On the international scale, the official negotiations on climate change adaptation have added the concept of 'loss and damages' to address the failure of mitigation and adaptation activities to sufficiently deal with the onslaught of problems related to climate change's ravaging impact on developing nations.
While loss and damages are not part of the vernacular in the United States, the extreme economic toll of recent weather events is impacting certain sectors of the marketplace.
The insurance industry is introducing mandatory climate related risk surveys for insurers in five states -- Connecticut, California, Minnesota, New York and Washington -- who distributed over $100m annually as a result of extreme weather events.as a result of extreme weather events.
In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, is working on a $125M 'catastrophe' bond to deal with damages from future extreme weather.
New York is preparing for an increase in severe weather after Sandy caused more than $30 billion of damage in the state. The city has just announced a $20 billion infrastructure plan to boost its storm defences, and the state now includes a warning about severe weather threats in its bond prospectuses. link
Meanwhile, across the pond, with 760 deaths attributed to a
UK heatwave where temperatures have climbed over 30C for six straight days, Independent Reporter Tom Bawden notes "American belief in climate change hots up."
"Americans’ belief in the existence of climate change is more closely linked to the thermometer than previously thought, a survey reveals," he writes. "Following a winter of record snowfall in 2010, the US public’s acceptance of climate change fell to a low of 52 per cent. By March this year it had staged something of a recovery, rising to 65 per cent. In the July heat, climate change acceptance is now at 70 per cent, according to the poll by the University of Texas." (See UT Energy Poll Shows Divides on Hydraulic Fracturing, Climate Change.)